


Diminishing

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Ouroboros: Aodhan Trevelyan X Dorian Pavus [8]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Love Letters, M/M, Trespasser DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 06:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8091406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Aodhan Trevelyan writes updates to Dorian in Tevinter.  There is a stack of letters he does not mean to send.  Why worry Dorian about the Anchor when there is nothing he can do to stop it?





	

The night is late, the moon high above Skyhold, but Aodhan finds sleep elusive.  It often is now.   **  
**

As a boy, he would have welcomed the insomnia.  It would have meant less time in the Fade, dealing with demons and spirits and his own desires, not yet knowing that he was coming into his magic.  It was a frightening time.  Yet he grows weary now, so sleep, of course, evades him.  He shakes his head, and returns to his letter.

_It comes back to the Anchor_ , Aodhan writes.   _It grows hungry, almost, the Fade pressing in upon my flesh.  It grows fiercer, sharper.  It **grows** , and I diminish._

He looks down at the ink glistening on the paper, a frown tucking the edges of his mouth to the side.  The quill blots and a dark smudge pools on the vellum.  He sighs.  It looks so _dramatic_ , written down like that.

Yet it is true.  

Aodhan examines his left hand, a pulse of green light spinning out lazily from the invisible seam in his palm.  He only winces slightly.  He’s grown used to the background throb of dull pain it emits, a steady ache.  He can sleep through that; he can bear a glove through that.  It has increased gradually over the last few months, but he could cope if that was all.

It’s the sudden jolts he struggles through, flashes of peridot and emerald coruscating through clenched fingers, a jagged searing of his nerves.  It makes him suck breath hard through pressed lips and flared nostrils, sweat beading on his brow.  It hurts.  It _hurts_.

He flexes his fingers thoughtfully, then touches quill to paper again. _It happened in the war room today.  It felt as if the Fade itself was trying to… dissolve… my arm.  The look Josie and Leliana shared was nearly as bad as the pain.  Cullen had the decency to ask, almost casually, if it was all right.  I preferred that to the way Leliana’s eyes narrowed, calculating how long I might last, or Josephine’s clear concern.  It was better to think of it as just a small annoyance.  I’ll have to remind myself to thank Cullen later.  We differ so much on the larger things that a connection like this in the little ways does help._

“Are you really going to send that?” he asks to the empty room.  Candlelight gutters in the mountain breeze wafting through his windows.  “You know it’ll only worry him.”

Aodhan smiles ruefully.  Weeks apart from Dorian are becoming more frequent.  It isn’t that they become better, but the familiarity of missing him makes it less unknown, and thus less frightening.  

He suspects that there is a great deal Dorian leaves out of his own letters, trying not to worry Aodhan.  They both prefer to deal with such things in person, and even then only after a careful dance of deflecting with humor and pretending they are fine.  It would be endlessly frustrating in Dorian if Aodhan didn’t do the exact same thing.  He grins.  “Fools, both of us.”

He tries not to think of what Dorian might artfully avoid mentioning.  Assassination attempts, most likely.  Slave mistreatment.  Blood magic.   _Politics_.  Aodhan is nearly glad of the Anchor, thinking of some of those other horrors.  

_I wish Solas were here.  I wish I knew why he wanted Corypheus’ orb.  I wonder if I could have had the Anchor removed, were it intact.  The rifts are closed.  I don’t need the bloody thing any longer.  I never wanted it, but it did have its uses… I can’t deny that.  But now…_

The sound of the quill scratching the paper mingles with the night breeze, the sound swirling around him.  A blissful distraction.  His left hand thrums with each pulse.  It’s raw tonight.

_There are times I can almost look **through** the mark, Dorian, and see beyond –_

He scratches out the line.

_I start to wonder if this part of me is truly real, or if part of me is passing through the Veil.  Can it ever go back like before?  Or is the mark going to continue to grow, leaving me a shell filled with Fade-light, a remnant of what I used to be –_

He scratches out that bit, too.  Flights of fancy.  Nonsense.  

But there is a _faintness_ about his hand, a blurring of the edges, maybe, or a translucence that goes beyond his fair skin into something more, something sinister, something no longer fully human.  For a moment he’s convinced he can see the wood grain of the desk, rich brown and gold and red, shimmering through his palm.

His fingers claw and scrabble convulsively at the wood, nerves firing randomly through the spark of the Anchor.  The sound of fingernails against the desk startles him, and then his hand is just a hand again, freckled, calloused, scarred.  

He’s breathing heavily, and it takes a moment to regulate himself again once more.  Steady, he reminds himself, steady, steady.  In the back of his mind he hears Dorian.   _One deep breath then, amatus.  Then another.   And another.  Take a moment, Aodhan._  A litany he carries with him, memories of Dorian there for him when he stumbled.  And he had stumbled many times, these past few years.

Ink black and flowing, a hint of gold flickering on the wet lines from the reflected candlelight. _I’ll just put these with the others, then.  Not sure when I’ll get a chance for you to read these, but it helps to write them, anyway.  I love you.  I wish you were here.  Enjoy the background reading._

Aodhan waves the vellum gently, urging it to dry a little faster.  Once the ink has set he carefully slips it in amongst the dusty pages of an imposing book.   _Chronological Aberrations and Manifestations of the Fade: An Understanding_ , written some centuries ago by an enterprising Rivaini.  The bookmonger had assured him it was a rare tome, difficult to find and long-forgotten, and certainly not Circle-validated.  Aodhan had perused it, sniffing now and then at the dust.  Much of it is outdated, but there are a few gems that could be incorporated into a modern understanding of time magic, still believed by many to be impossible.  Aodhan closes the book carefully.  He knows better.  

Aodhan turns to a new sheet of vellum, quill ready.  

_Dorian,_

_You mustn’t be foolish, love.  It’s clear you’re dealing with some sticky situations back home.  You can tell me about them, you know.  Stay safe out there in the general wickedness that is Tevinter!  (You do realize until I visit I’ll simply continue to tease you enormously about your home country… the solution, clearly, is to let me tag along soon.  Stop protesting.  Are you doing that thing with your eyebrow?  As charming as it is, it won’t work on me, love.)_

_I miss you.  No surprises there.  I miss you in the exciting things, like adventure and intrigue and shamelessly good lovemaking, but also in little moments, like the way your hair goes mussed in the morning.  There’s a beauty in those moments I can’t describe.  At times I think I miss those most of all._

_Skyhold remains Skyhold, of course.  Sera and Dagna nearly blew up half the foundry last week, it smelled astounding.  I’m not sure what happened there.  Varric has got something going on in Kirkwall.  He jokes they’re going to make him Viscount.  I’ve never heard of a dwarven viscount in the Free Marches, but we Marchers **are** free and each state does as it damn well pleases.  We shall see._

_I’m doing well.  It’s been rather quiet, mission and monster-wise.  No new rifts.  No new scars.  I’ve been studying, mainly.  I had precious little time to do that during the hunt for Corypheus, and I’m enjoying learning new theory.  I still don’t think I shall ever conjure a proper fireball that isn’t funneled through rift magic, but I’ve some notes you may find interesting.  I’ll wait until the next time I see you for those, though – wouldn’t do to pull you into a book when you’ve got work to do, after all._

_I love you, Dorian.  Come back to me soon._

_Yours, always,_

_Aodhan_

The Anchor feels as it will split his hand in two, but the letter is done.  The one that will be sent, at any rate.  Aodhan thinks, probably, he will give Dorian the book with the others the next time they meet.

Probably, but he isn’t sure.

“He’d only worry,” he says again to the empty room.  “And there’s not much point in that.”  His hand twists on itself, and he grimaces.  

He gets to his feet, stretching, yawning.  Sleep is finally tugging at him, weighing him down.  He blows out the candles, strips in the dark, slides into bed.  

Aodhan gazes at the ceiling.  He cannot tell where the darkness ends and the ceiling begins.  Where are the borders?  He cannot say.

“Just like me,” he mumbles.  The only thing that answers him is the hiss, soft and sibilant, from the Anchor.

**Author's Note:**

> Inquisitors suffering effects of the Anchor just gut me.


End file.
